How to Add Eye Color in Adobe Camera Raw

September 17, 2016

Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of touch-ups to faces using Adobe Camera Raw. Remarkably, this is one of the areas many people have trouble with and just as remarkably, it’s really one of the easiest. With the correct tools and knowledge, facial editing can be completed in no time flat.

In today’s post, I’ll be working on the eyes of a young boy. I’d like to brighten them and then add a bit of color. The photo I’ll be using is really great – it’s clear and up-close. Basically, everything I would want to show off some of my editing skills.

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Original Photo

At first glance, you might think this is the perfect shot. I’d tend to agree – that is, if I hadn’t already done some work to it behind the scenes before I began writing this post. I’ve seen the potential and believe me, it can look a lot better. It is a good base though.

Editing in Basic Panel & Removing Blemishes

Before I begin doing anything to the eyes in this photo, I’d like to perform my traditional edits in the Basic panel. I’ve included these types of edits in quite a few number of posts now. To see some of them, search the terms “basic panel camera raw” in the search bar above. If you want to see something more direct, check out this post:

There really aren’t too many blemishes. Only four areas that I want to touch up. Here’s the photo after all that’s finished:

And here’s a before and after of the edits I made so far in Camera Raw.

Pretty cool, huh? So far, this took me about 30 seconds. It’s really not very difficult. If you’re interested, I’ll give you a screenshot of the Basic panel below. These are my settings, minus what I did with the Spot Removal Tool.

Brightening & Sharpening the Eyes

For this next step, I’d like to brighten and sharpen the eyes. If you ask any photographer what the most important facial feature is when photographing, I’m confident they’ll tell you it’s the eyes. When your subject has strong eyes, it can really make a photo. That’s why so many editors focus the majority of their time in this area.

The first things I’m going to do to accomplish what I’m after in this section is to select the Adjustment Brush Tool from the top toolbar.

Then, I’ll click on the Reset Local Correction Settings from the small menu at the top of the Adjustment Brush panel.

This will zero out any sliders that may have been set for previous edits. This is always a good thing to do.

After that, I’ll just give the Exposure slider a nudge to the right, to increase exposure. I’ll also resize my brush with the Size slider so it’s appropriate for this project (5) and I’ll add a soft edge by pushing the Feather slider to the right a bit (30). Right now, that’s all I want to do. Even though there are many other sliders that I’m going to push, right now, I just want to get something on the photo to see. I’ll bring the exposure up to +0.75.

By the way, the Exposure slider is at the top of the Adjustment Brush panel and the other two sliders are down at the bottom of the same panel. Below is a screenshot of the lower settings I’m using.

Finally, I’ll color in the iris of the eye with my brush. Here’s what it looks like now:

At this point, I have an active adjustment area. “Active” means that I can select it and then push more sliders around to adjust it. That’s why I wasn’t concerned about moving any other sliders right away. I could always push them around after that fact. With that in mind, I’ll go ahead and do that now. I’ll give you a list of what sliders I touched and their settings.

Adding Color to the Eyes

Now, I know the point of this post was to add color to the eyes, or to actually change the color of the eyes. I’ll show you how to do that next. It’s just that I had to go through a few steps before I got to this one. And remember, this next step is totally up to you. You can go about adding and changing color however you want. It’s a preference thing. I’ll merely guide you towards the tools necessary to accomplish something like this.

Now that I’ve got my adjustment area active, I can click on the Color adjustment area that’s included in the Adjustment Brush panel.

I’ll click right in the box. Once I do that, the Color Picker will appear.

To add some color to any adjustment area, all you need to do is select a color with your mouse. The way I like to do this is to choose a fully saturated color by clicking the very top of the color and then using the Saturation slider inside the Color Picker to reduce the saturation. In the case of this photo, I’m choosing a Saturation of 50 and a Hue of 50, just to keep things simple. I’m also choosing a color that’s similar to what’s already in the eye, so nothing clashes. If the eye color was more neutral, I can change the color in the Color Picker to actually change the color of the eye. It’s really cool what you can do with this one tool.

Here is the final photo:

I want to offer a word of warning when you work on eyes. It’s very easy to go overboard. When editing anything that has to do with the face, especially the eyes, make a few changes and then walk away for a few minutes. That should be enough time to reset your vision. If you come back to your computer and say, “Whoa,” you may have gone too far. Reduce some of the previous changes and try again.

I hope I explained how to go about adding some color to someone’s eyes using Adobe Camera Raw. If you have any questions or comments, please leave them in the comment section below. Thanks!

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About Jay Gaulard

Hi. My name is Jay Gaulard and I've been designing websites and taking photographs since 2002. My passions lie with learning the latest coding techniques and development tools as well as staying on top of the digital imaging world. When I'm not studying or writing, I'm practicing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in Maine, USA.

Comments

1) When you write: ” “Active” means that I can select it and then push more sliders around to adjust it” how does one go about *selecting* it? How is that activated so further changes can be made?

2) I noticed that you often reduce the highlight slider (often almost 100%) and raise the whites slider. I know that adding whites kind of “cleans up” and brightens the photo but why reduce the highlights? And why so much?

1) Once you select the Adjustment Brush Tool and touch an image, a small pin (adjustment area identifier) is created. To see what that pin looks like, please take a look at the 3rd and 4th images of this post:

A white pin is inactive and a red pin with a small black center is active.

Let’s say you have multiple adjustment areas. If you have those areas already adjusted and then start working on something else, that’s fine. To return to the areas, all you need to do is select the Adjustment Brush Tool once again and right after that, all of the pins for the adjustment areas will appear. Simply click on one of the pins to make that particular area “active.” At that point, you can go ahead and push the sliders that affect that area once again.

2. Regarding the Highlights and the Whites sliders, I’ve found that many images have highlights that are totally blown out. I’m actually working on a photo right now that has some pretty serious clipping on the right side of the histogram. By reducing the highlights to 0, I basically bring that histogram back in line so there’s no more clipping. The strange thing is, by bringing the highlights to 0, I’m not even reducing them all that much. Oftentimes, they’re still towards the center/right side of the histogram.

Here’s what Adobe says about the Highlights tonal adjustment:

Highlights: Adjusts bright image areas. Drag to the left to darken highlights and recover “blown out” highlight details. Drag to the right to brighten highlights while minimizing clipping.

I find that the Whites slider gives more of a contrasted brightness to images. Take a look at what Adobe says about this slider:

Whites: Adjusts white clipping. Drag to the left to reduce clipping in highlights. Drag to the right to increase highlight clipping. (Increased clipping may be desirable for specular highlights, such as metallic surfaces.)

If I can reduce the “general” brightness of an image the Highlights slider, I can bring back more of a controlled brightness with the Whites slider. I think it’s more of a habit thing I picked up over the long term. I find myself doing the same tonal adjustments image after image, so now I push the sliders the way I always do to get me sort of where I need to be and then I make more subtle adjustments from there.

I need to experiment with reducing the highlights more. For some reason I have a weird hesitation when I move ANY slider (other than exposure) more than 25 or 30. But I’ll definitely look at that since you indicate that -100 doesn’t necessarily mean uber flat. Thanks!

Definitely go for it. When moving down the Basic panel, I start with the Highlight slider. After that, I push the rest around and then return to the top where I adjust Exposure and Contrast. I do this with an understanding that the photo will look pretty horrible until I fix things by increasing Exposure. I never used to use Contrast, but am more not – just a bit.

I just opened a photo of a sky with clouds in it and moved the Whites slider all the way to the left. Not a lot changed in the photo, but the overexposed areas of the clouds did offer more detail. Then, I pushed the Highlights slider to the left and it only screwed things up. Since those two sliders are so closely related, I think the user needs to experiment with whatever picture it is they’re working on. There’s really no set answer for this one.

Fascinating process (to do the other sliders before exposure). I’ll have to try that.

Another thing I am trying is hiding the histogram while doing much of the work. An obsession with getting details everywhere can result in an accurate – and very boring – photo.

I need to keep in mind that in the old darkroom days I went for what made emotional sense rather than formally accurate. That was more compelling most of the time (and yet it is so easy to become a slave to the histogram!)

Definitely try working the exposure slider last. I like to think of that as the “cleanup” setting. It hides a lot and makes tons of difference to a photo. Regarding the histogram, yeah, I hardly use it at all. Only when I’m having an issue or don’t trust what I’m looking at in the photo. That’s when it comes in handy.

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